


quiero caminar contigo

by Skyepilot



Category: Knives Out (2019)
Genre: Eating, F/M, Flashbacks, Flirting, Friends to Lovers, Humor, Kissing, Romance, Sex, Teasing, Walking, my perfectly normal obsession with suspenders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:49:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26610139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/pseuds/Skyepilot
Summary: Benoit asks Marta to walk with him after the trial.
Relationships: Benoit Blanc/Marta Cabrera
Comments: 4
Kudos: 62





	quiero caminar contigo

“Quiero caminar contigo.”

“Excuse me?” she asks, blinking slowly for a moment, standing in the shadow of the courthouse.

“I, uh,” he pauses for a moment, holding his hand out like he's thinking. “Quiero caminar contigo,” he repeats.

“No, I heard you the first time,” she replies, relieved now that she _hadn't_ imagined it, another impulse beginning to take its place. The one from earlier when she was on the stand and sought out his eyes in the audience.

“Was my attempt to roll the Rs a little too-” he starts to ask quietly, self-conscious.

“No,” she says, with a small smile, delighted. The Last of the Gentleman Detectives is nervous. “It's good.”

“Okay,” he says with a small smile of his own, slipping his hand back into his jacket pocket, keeping his eyes locked on hers.

“So...now?” she asks him with a shrug, looking around at the county courthouse steps, the streets and sidewalks nearby.

“Well, if you are so inclined, I thought it might be a nice way to clear the air-”

“Clear the air,” she repeats quickly, starting to enjoy herself. “Of what, exactly?” she goes on, knotting her eyebrows. “Is there a misconception here of some kind, Blanc?”

“I meant,” he says, closing his eyes to find the right words. “Miss Cabrera.” He starts again. “To _get_ some air.”

The trial is still taking place inside, and she was given permission to leave after her testimony. There was no reason for her to stay in there and watch that man stare daggers at her because he couldn't get away with stabbing her with a real one.

“That would be great,” she says to him, nodding quickly. “Lead the way, _Watson_.”

He gives her a curious look, then surveys the area much like she just did, putting his finger to his lips and patting them while he works out where it is exactly they're headed.

Confirming to her that Benoit Blanc can, indeed, be impulsive after all. It's certainly intriguing to get to watch him squirm for a change.

“There is a park in this direction if I recall,” he says, hands in his pockets, tilting his head in the direction he wants them to walk.

They ease into a comfortable stroll together, side by side, as the ends of her long scarf sways.

“Is that a new scarf?” he asks her, gesturing towards it. “Something from your dear mother, no doubt.”

“Not that new,” she says, pulling on it to look down at the striped pattern with the crocheted roses. “But yes, from my mother. She prayed over it while she was making it. Good luck, I guess?”

“Hmm,” he hums in agreement, then adds with some bitterness. “Some protection from the slings and arrows of city lawyers.”

“Yes,” she tells him, not really wanting to get back to the subject of the trial right now. “I thought you were trying to distract me?”

“Quite so, my apologies,” he tells her. “You did admirably,” he adds. “ _More_ than admirable.”

She decides to just cut to the chase. “It was nice to be able to pick you out in the crowd. To think about what you said to me that day. _Thank you_.”

He looks down at his shoes thoughtfully. “If anyone, it is _you_ who are deserving of gratitude.”

Stopping, she halts and he is forced to look up at her and she takes a step closer to him. “You told me to never forget that I won by not playing by their rules.”

“So I did,” he tells her softly, his eyes wandering across her face, as she feels herself start to flush under his gaze.

“And then, there were all kinds of rules, and legal things, and city lawyers. But at least ones on my side for once,” she says bemusedly.

“It is not something you easily escape from, is it?” he adds sympathetically, a pang of guilt on his face.

“You would know,” she agrees with him and sees his eyes widen slightly from behind his glasses. “Blanc, you didn't owe me anything,” she tells him with a sigh, putting a hand on his suit jacket, as he stares down at the gesture. “You still don't.”

She wants to make sure this is not about some kind of misplaced guilt, even if it would be so disappointing to discover it was, she needs to know the truth.

“I do know,” he tells her, his eyes locked on hers again. “It was over, but, it was just beginning.”

“A-are we still talking about the trial?” she asks him, holding onto a breath, her eyes dropping to his lips, then his throat moving after a careful swallow.

“If the trial were, perhaps, a metaphor of sorts?” he answers, swaying closer? She is unsure. Then he lowers his voice. “May I ask why I am under direct examination, Miss Cabrera?”

Okay, definitely closer.

“Marta,” she answers, pointedly, raising her chin. He has to shift his whole body, his posture. It makes her feel thrillingly hopeful.

“Marta,” he repeats dutifully, looking down like he is trying the word out all over again, then flicks his eyes open to hers again.

“I just think,” says to him softly. “And you might agree, that we could both do with a lot fewer rules, Detective Blanc?”

“Benoit,” he says very gently, and she can feel the tips of his fingers just touch the top of her hand.

Then she does the thing she has mapped out in her head many times, she leans and kisses him. At the corner of his mouth, first, feels the stubble of his beard growing back with her cheek, lingers.

He kisses her back almost immediately, pressing his lips softly into hers, waiting for her breath to catch, until her arms are encircling his neck before deepening it.

And his hands are on her waist.

Oh, this damn puffy jacket.

***

The restaurant at his hotel is quiet, and was obviously a fancier place in the past but not as much now.

It's perfect. All the people here are couples who want some quiet and an early dinner, too.

If it had been room service, she would end up staying from the afternoon through the night. And school has started again, her sister needs to borrow the car tomorrow. _Mierda._ She can afford another car now.

He is watching her, her hair still a bit messy, she realizes, smoothing it down. He's absolutely trying his best to convince her to stay by wearing those suspenders without his tie and jacket.

It looks _sultry_ on him. He makes her feel like it's a hundred degrees inside. So silly. A pair of suspenders, she thinks with a smile, as he reaches his hand across the table and slides his fingers in between hers, and carefully draws up her hand so he can kiss each knuckle.

She had propositioned him, because, if she was going to say things about tossing away rules, she had to start living it, right?

And she told him how to invite her into his hotel room in Spanish, which he was currently brushing upon, and then he told her that she wasn't the only one who had been thinking about this.

“ _For how long?”_

“ _A long time, Watson.”_

Ah, so it was _then_. When he asked her to stick by his side. When he laid bare his entire methodology, even told her about his father knowing Harlan. Said he was waiting around to speak to her.

“Well,” she had told him, pulling his dress shirt out from the waist of his pants when they had shut the hotel door behind them. “You were lying to me when you said that you,” she quirks her head, recalling. “Observe without 'biases' or your heart involved?”

“I never said I was incapable of mistruthin'. _Only_ when necessary,” he clarified. “To remind you, I did have an obligation, seeing as I mistook you for a doughnut hole at the time.”

“This doughnut is going to have you for dessert,” she promised, kissing against his smiling mouth until the backs of his knees were against the end of the bed.

“You did try to skip dinner earlier,” he reminds her now, coolly, as she looks up from her menu at him, watches him set his menu down and fold up his glasses and put them in his shirt pocket.

“The dessert was _amazing_. Look, I want to stay,” she tells him sadly. “Family stuff sits outside the rules, you know-”

“And admire,” he answers. “It's something that we share.”

“Your mom must be great, huh? To have such an inquisitive and sensitive, astute child-”

“She was _patient_ ,” he tells her with a chuckle. “And knows how to see the best in people.”

“Should we get some biscuits and gravy?” she asks him excitedly, setting her hands down on her menu. “They have all-day breakfast here.”

“I am sugar in your hand.”

“You make that sound so sexy,” she had told him with a laugh, laying beside him in the hotel bed. “And funny at the same time.”

“Because I do, dear Marta,” he told her, kissing down her thigh starting at the top of her bent knee. “Love to see you laugh.”

She laughs. At his stubble tickling the top of her hip. Out of happiness that they're here together, on today of all days.

“And in addition to your kind heart, you are so breathtakingly beautiful, Marta. Your eyes, my goodness.”

His crystalline blue eyes just gaze up at her, waiting for permission to go further.

“Then put your kind,” she told him, lifting his hand and putting his open palm on her stomach. “Inquisitive hands, all over me, Benoit.”

He kissed harder that time, teeth tugging at her lower lip, pulling her up against him, while she arranged her leg around his waist. Feeling him, hard and warm, against her stomach.

“It's one of the benefits of being a nurse,” she tells him, cutting into the biscuits and sausage gravy. “I know how to get the good stuff.”

“I am in your debt once again,” he tells her. “I was not prepared at all for what happened today. Would've run to the corner store, if need be. Hell, I would've run all the way to Boston and back,” he adds with a big laugh, reflecting.

“All the way to Boston, huh?” she says with a huge smile, looking at his eyes sparkling back at her. “Why don't you come spend the night with me?”

“Is that allowed?” he asks with seriousness, putting down his fork and knife.

“Yes,” she laughs with a nod. “It's a very big house.”

***

She likes to be on top.

With this sweet, lovable man underneath her, practically singing her praises.

_Not_ an exaggeration.

Every time she stops to catch her breath, he moves underneath her, like he wants to get closer, like there is always more, an endless more.

This is even better than she imagined or fantasized, whatever. The layer of remaining guilt that she felt about having a crush on him as a PI on her case is gone.

They are both trying to be quiet, and the quiet part is not exactly working out.

“Shit!” she says, her voice hitching upward, as he rolls his hips under her, raising her so she falls forward into his arms, making even the big heavy wood headboard thump against the wall as he holds her weight.

They both start to laugh together.


End file.
